"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." — C.S. Lewis

Nationalism

In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks of “one people.” The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins, “We the people …”

And who were these “people”?

In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as “one united people … descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs. …” If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one nation and one people?

We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country. We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago ceased to profess the same religion. We are evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.

Federalist No. 2 celebrated our unity. Today’s elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength. But is this true, or a tenet of trendy ideology? After the attempted massacre of Republican congressmen at that ball field in Alexandria, Fareed Zakaria wrote: “The political polarization that is ripping this country apart” is bout “identity … gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation (and) social class.” He might have added – religion, morality, culture and history.

As we celebrate motherhood today, there is a significant trend worth noting. We often hear “think of the children” when an unpopular or unwise piece of legislation is being proposed. And yet, few of our leaders have “skin in the game” when it comes to their nation’s future:

Emmanuel Macron founded a new party, and his election as France’s president is said to herald the “revival of Europe.” Interestingly, Macron has no children.

This is not that notable in itself. After all, George Washington had no biological children. But across the continent Macron wants to bind closer together, there’s a stark pattern:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also has no children. British prime minister Theresa May has no children. Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni has no children. Holland’s Mark Rutte has no children. Sweden’s Stefan Loumlfven has no biological children. Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel has no children. Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon has no children. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, has no children.

This is too remarkable to ignore. While Macron is young—39 years old—the rest of Europe is being governed by childless Baby Boomers…

It’s clear which side has political power now. But the demographics point to a different future. In 2009 Phillip Longman noted that in France (for example) a tiny minority of women are giving birth to over 50% of the children every year. These women are either practicing Catholics or immigrant Muslims.

Contemporary childless leaders, however ascendant they feel today, may be the last gasp of secularism. The future is won by those who show up, and only the religiously orthodox are having children.

Those still swimming in the ancient streams of Faith and Culture in France will have the observant offspring of two rival religions living within the borders of one nation. The second Battle of Tours, (or Vienna, or Lepanto) might be extra bloody due to the policies of today, but the authors of those policies will not be around because they will be dead, and their offspring will not be around, because they do not exist.

Surely Macron, Merkel, Juncker, and the rest would argue that they can do their crucial jobs better because they don’t have children to distract them. C.S. Lewis provides the rebuttal: “Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”

The elite have long been insulated from the effects of their piously pie-in-the-sky policies by doing such things as living in gated communities and sending their children to high-priced private schools. As this article points out, they have even less reason today to worry about the effects of their futile utopianism. This is probably a key reason why our leadership seems so out of touch with the people they allegedly lead, especially in the area of immigration. It won’t be their children suffering from the resurgence of long-controlled diseases like measles and whooping cough. It won’t be theirchildren who will either have to fight or conform to alien ideologies that were allowed in through millions of adherents’ migration. It won’t be their children who face falling wages due to competition from cheaper labor overseas and immigrant labor at home. They can afford to wear utopian blinders in a way no parent can.

“The problem with trying to induce the benefits of nationhood onto Afghanistan is that there’s no nation there. Afghanistan is a more of a blank spot on the map where neighboring nations aren’t.” — Stephen Green, via Instapundit

Many Americans just can’t seem to understand that many people groups don’t wantto live like us, and that our efforts to shape them that way is seen as aggression of the highest order. One cannot make a state where there is no national identity. And for much of the Middle East and Central Asia, identity is found in family, kinsmen and tribe. Lines drawn on a map by outsiders mean nothing, as the Pashtuns of both western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan have shown.

Same is true of Iraq, an artificial conglomerate of Sunni, Shia and Kurds. Left alone without Saddam as the heavy-handed glue to hold them together, the country would fragment and the Kurds would no longer be the largest ethnic group in the world without its own homeland. While I was in Baghdad years ago, President Bush announced our mission had shifted from toppling Saddam to building a free, united and stable Iraq. A quick wit on our team quickly turned that into a drawing on the wall, with the caption of “pick any two.” That’s still the wisest assessment I’ve ever heard about that instance of mission creep.

Notwithstanding efforts to spread the Gospel, it’s time to let others live as they’ve chosen, and stop bringing so many of them here so we can do the same.

In the wake of the Brexit vote in Britain and the recent Italian referendum, and with national elections looming in 2017 in the Netherlands, France, and Germany, there is concern that Europe may be inundated by a populist wave, driven in large part by right-wing parties exploiting anti-globalization, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim sentiments…

Polls show that people who have a favorable view of the National Front (FN) in France, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany, and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands tend to be more negative about immigrants, refugees, and Muslims than their fellow countrymen. In addition, they are more euro-skeptic and more wary of globalization than their compatriots.

While the often nasty, nativist rhetoric of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the FN, or Geert Wilders, the founder of the Dutch Party for Freedom, is certainly key to attracting supporters, the intensity and breadth of right-wing, populist sentiments among party sympathizers — as well as a substantial minority of the general public — is notable in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Here’s how Foreign Policy could have worded the first paragraph to be less biased: “Recent elections, including the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, seem to indicate the electorates in many countries no longer silently accept the watering down of their culture and increasing threats of terrorism just to accommodate the greatest mass migration in world history. They’ve seen the ruin that globalization and mass immigration has caused, and now they’re saying the push for “diversity” should at least include the idea of a Germany for the Germans, a Britain for the British, a France for the French and an America for Americans.”

The great irony is that in the name of ‘diversity,’ the globalists are really pursuing the lowest common denominator and forcing it onto everyone, everywhere. That’s the antithesis of diversity! Each nation should have the sovereign right to determine who gets to live among them, and to require immigrants adapt to their new home, not the other way around. Such protections cannot be entrusted to what is clearly a transnational elite with no real connection to the people they allegedly represent.

As the article points out, in 2017 there are some key elections in France, Germany, and Holland. We can expect to hear more name-calling as the transnational press attempts to slander concerned, patriotic nationalists as simple “nasty nativists,” in the manner Geert Wilders is called out in this article. While I don’t appreciate a lot of things Donald Trump says off the cuff, I’ll give him this: he seems impervious to being bullied away from his positions by the smears of the media minions. More of us need to follow that example.

And the more “they” try to cram this down our throats, the more response they’re going to get. What all these self-appointed elites need to ask themselves is why people increasingly support strident nationalism instead of their preferred program. In other words, what have they done that makes electing Donald Trump seem a reasonable alternative? They’ll never be that introspective, though. So things are only going to get worse.

…and America belongs to those who built it… not the Juan- or Muhammed-come-latelies.